Many people arduously strive for greatness trying to be something that they are not. In one of Joan Cornella’s comic strips, there is a male who wants to become tan in order to impress an attractive potential wife but ends up being unhappy in his marriage. Cornella is able to make the common individual connect to this piece immediately through its relevancy in everyday society. Cornella exemplifies the concept of doing harm to oneself for another and ultimately becoming miserable through different settings and emotions of the characters.

One major aspect presented in the comic that truly shows the audience the important different feelings of the male is the setting. The use of different colors and background images translates into feelings of success and failure. The beach serves as the background of the first-time frame of the comic. The beach background signifies to the reader that people are going to be judged based on their appearance because usually at a beach most people are wearing revealing swim wear that reveals most of people’s bodies. This background is an environment that is relaxing and enjoyable to the viewer. It’s a relaxing environment because most people that go to the beach are looking for a place to lay back and vacation. The background also sets the tone of happiness and gives the reader a high expectation for the male character due to society’s viewing of the beach as a peaceful and happy place. The audience continues to have a positive impression of the story through the combination of the gold background with stars in the next frame. The viewer gets a feeling of accomplishment through the gold stars because most individuals relate them to success. Also, the woman wearing a wedding dress makes the reader feel happy since weddings and joyfulness usually go together. The perception of the two characters getting married on a beach fills the reader with a sense of happiness. Despite the feeling of happiness set by the background, there is a sacrifice that is made. The trade-off is the sacrifice of his body for the opportunity with the girl. At this point in the comic, the point of marriage, the sacrifice of the male seems worthwhile, because the author shows the audience a peaceful atmosphere followed up by a background full of gold stars, which emulates a feeling of accomplishment even though the male character is changing himself. 

The story takes a sharp turn when the beach and gold background become lime green. Lime green is a color that elicits a negative connotation for the reader because this color is a harsh color as compared to the gold used previously in the comic. The sudden transition from the beach and the gold background to lime green makes the viewer believe that the decision of the man was a mistake. A feeling of uneasiness is felt by the audience because of the simplicity of a solid background with little to no details as compared to the detailed background of the beach and gold stars that elicited happiness. The simplicity of the background exemplifies the inability to receive a reward for the man’s sacrifice of his body because the absence of detail symbolizes that the man isn’t going to be rewarded.  With the lime green background, the viewer begins to feel a sense of regret. Through the changing of the background, the author is able to show how making sacrifices for another can have negative consequences. 

The use of facial expressions used in the comic contributes to how the audience feels about the story. Beginning in the first frame of the comic, the viewer can interpret the emotions of the male and female through facial expressions. The author depicts the male with a sad expression conveying that the male has low confidence in himself. As the next frame appears, the viewer can conclude that the male has come up with an idea of how to gain the attention of the girl by changing his skin tone. The male decides to do this by burning himself. In the third frame, after he damages his body, he receives the attention of the girl. The expression on the male’s face reflects a sense of success felt by the audience because the audience begins to believe that the male’s actions are worth it because he was rewarded. However, later in the comic, the reader begins to see how the male character isn’t being rewarded. 

 Along with the changes of background, the graphics and facial expressions help to convey the change of emotions throughout the comic to the viewer. Specifically, the combination of the third frame and the fourth show the male finding love through his sacrifice. This is depicted through the fact that the women is in a wedding dress getting ready to get married next to the man because he has changed the color of his skin. The graphics in the third frame show the viewer that the male is trying to get the female by sacrificing his body. In the third frame, there are hearts around the female, representing love of the female towards the male. The features make the reader read the image as if the female falls for the male just because he changes his physical features that are more admirable for the girl. So, by this point, yet again, the viewer begins to feel as if the sacrifice of the male was desirable because of the outcome of it. In the fourth frame, the male and the female hold hands while the woman is in a wedding dress, showing that the two got married and are in love. By the next frame, the viewer completely has an understanding of accomplishment and happiness for the male and his sacrifice.

In the fifth frame, the negative consequences from his actions are further supported by all the individual aspects of the image working together. In this frame, the viewer begins to lose all hope in accomplishment and begins to feel empathy for the stupidity in the male. The emotional doubt seen on the male’s face in this frame is accompanied by his wife being obese and less appealing and surrounded by children. The wife’s appearance exemplifies the irony of the male character sacrificing himself for the physical appearance of a female; in the end the female is ugly and the male’s sacrifice was unsuccessful. Through the contrast between the first four scenes and the last two, the viewer is able to discover the theme of the comic: when a man sacrifices his genuine self for a gift in his life that appears to be beneficial, there will often be dissatisfying consequences. This is shown because the man in the comic burns himself to become tan, then marries a woman he likes, and then becomes miserable in his marriage. 

Joan Cornella, in her comic strip, uses different configurations and frames to exemplify how, when an individual makes a sacrifice that is harmful towards themselves for another person, the end result is disastrous. The author uses the details of a setting or background, different colors and objects illustrated, and differing facial expressions and graphics to convey a story that the audience can follow while reading the illustrations. Joan Cornella shows the audience that giving up something that is part of yourself only ends in a worse reality then where you started at. The audience is able to truly get a grasp on how giving up your individuality for a perfect reality makes a person’s world imperfect. 